Friday, 31 May 2013

Feds Issue Guidelines to Limit Distracted Driving

The Department of Transportation recently
released voluntary guidelines that call on automakers to restrict motorists’
use of distracting technology in automobiles.However, the Department of Transportation guidelines are
entirely voluntary, and the agency has stopped short of requiring these
measures which California personal injury lawyers find very disappointing.

According to the Department of Transportation
guidelines, the federal agency is recommending the establishment of special
criteria for technologies that require motorists to take their hands off the
steering wheel and eyes off the road to use devices.The guidelines also include a recommendation that car
manufacturers limit the time the a driver can take his eyes off the road to
perform a task to just 2 seconds at a time, and 12 seconds in all.

The guidelines also recommend that automakers
disable several distracting operations unless the vehicle is in stop or park
mode.These include manual texting,
typing text messages, browsing on the Internet, video phoning or video
conferencing, displaying text messages, and displaying content from WebPages
and social media.

What is encouraging about the guidelines is
that they take into consideration the fact that many people are using in-car
technology not just to make or receive calls on their cell phones, but also to
surf the Internet, make restaurant reservations, update their Facebook pages
and Twitter statuses, make video calls and perform other Internet-based
activities.The guidelines however
would only apply to built-in devices, like navigational devices that are fitted
on the dashboard.

The guidelines were based on a recent study
conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that found that
using handheld phones and other communication devices increase accident risks by
as much as 3 times.